First Braggot?

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NewBee
Registered Member
Feb 2, 2013
3
0
0
I've been brewing Mead for a good while now, and I've decided I wanted to try making a Braggot. Problem is, I have no idea what I'm doing here.

1)Is the a "NewBee Guide" for how to make a braggot? I've never dealt with beer/grains/hops before, and could use a nice reference to get me started.

2)Are there any simple proven recipes? Something like the JOAM of Braggots, I guess. I know what I'm doing when it comes to wine/mead, but have never even tasted a Braggot, let alone make one.

Thanks in advance!
 
The first braggot I made was a recipe I found here by Joe M of JAOM fame. Below is the link and the recipe verbatim. I brewed beer many years prior to getting into mead so I tweaked the recipe some but found the end product to be very enjoyable. Especially after a year in the bottle.

If you have no experience with brewing beer you might want to consider getting a beer kit from you Local Home Brew Shop of your favorite type od beer and simply adding honey after you've chilled the wort.


http://www.gotmead.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8313

0.5 lb 40 L Crystal Malt
0.25 oz your favorite bittering hop
3-4 lbs light DME
5 lbs Honey
irish moss (optional)
water to 5 gallons total volume
your favorite ale yeast
5 oz priming sugar at bottling

very simple but very nice. i like the honey flavor and aroma to predominate in this recipe so i use the bare minimum amount of bittering hops and NO aroma hops, of course you can always decide to add them if you like. i steep the crystal at 170 degrees for 20 minutes then remove it. i then boil the DME and bittering hops for 60 minutes (adding the irish moss after 45 min), remove from the boil and add the honey. i have had great sucess with liquid london ale yeast, but really any good quality ale yeast can be used. i usually rack once or twice over the course of three months and then bottle and age for 6 months to a year.
 
I've done a couple of things with crystal malt and dry malt extract now, and I don't use Irish Moss yet, but since I bottle carb everything, it all ends up cloudy as soon as I crack it open anyway. If you're curious about hops, we've got a thread over here discussing just that!